You look fabulous, darling!

A month ago I complimented a woman's outfit in the ladies' room and inexplicably ended up with her phone number. One of my friends told me that's what I get for talking to strangers. He said I need to go through life like he does, waving around an emotional yardstick and keeping people at a distance. Hours later I got into an elevator with an immaculately dressed woman who was wearing a pretty brown dress with hot pink shoes, scarf, and earrings. It's rare to see perfectly accessorized people, so of course I immediately ooh'd over the outfit. She was delighted and stepped out of the elevator glowing happily. I reflected on Thad's warning and thought, "Horseshit! Compliments should always be passed on!" This is something I truly believe, as few people tend to say the nice things they're thinking right out loud. If someone tells me something nice about a friend, I pass it on. But I realized the women I impulsively compliment about their appearance have more in common than fabulous style: they're almost always black.

I wondered what the hell that meant? Why don't I compliment women of other races? Surely I've seen fabulously dressed whites and asians and latinas, yet I have yet to blurt out, "Those are such adorable shoes!" to a total stranger of this ethnicity.

I briefly worried over what this said about me. Maybe these compliments of mine aren't genuine. Maybe they're merely a subconscious reflex of some latent guilt I carry in regards to race?

But then I realized something else: the only women who ever compliment ME are BLACK. In my experience, there are no women more generous towards other women in celebrating physical appearance than black women. The women who regularly shower me with praise over my shoes or my hair or my outfits are all black. I know they're being relentlessly sincere, because they're just as quick to let me know when something I'm experimenting with isn't working. When I paired tights with black slip-on platform sandals in December, I got some negative feedback in the form of, "Jen! Uh-uh" with a head shake and finger wave of disapproval. I wasn't too certain about it myself, chiefly because the sandals were designed to be worn on bare feet, so my tights-clad feet slid around too much and I was struggling to keep the shoes on as I walked. This criticism came from the same woman who had previously let me know my hair color made me look like Marilyn Monroe. I know THAT wasn't true, but I'm betting all women of color expect all blonde white women to consider it the ultimate compliment to be compared to Monroe. Her disapproval of the tights/sandals combo compelled me to relegate this impractical experiment to a "don't." Though I'll add I saw the same look in Vogue a month later on a runway model and felt vaguely triumphant over my innate fashion sense. Then again it's rare that runway looks actually work in the real world.

What's interesting is there are white women I work with whom I would consider work friends, people I don't mind talking to 9-5 but don't really seek out when I'm not paid to be somewhere. Contrary to the outspoken acquaintances, they never ever offer even the mildest compliment nor do they comment in a positive manner about other women privately. One work friend in particular regularly torments me by "jokingly" calling me "slut." She openly criticizes my cleavage, my skirts, everything, and laughs about it. This doesn't bother me, it just strikes me as rather odd and junior high school. And those kinds of remarks would have been devastating to me in junior high. What's the point of lobbing unkind comments at this stage of the game? She is part of the small group of girls I've dubbed The Fox Force Five, though only I, the Tarantino fan, understand the reference. They wanted me to be part of their club, and were very persistent about recruiting me by inundating me with emails until I finally replied. The Fox Force Five exchanges email conversations consisting primarily of ripping on anyone and everyone. They're all white. White women can be universally nasty about everyone. Especially other women. When I participate in FFF verbal evisceration, it's only to make amusing observations or to rip apart corporate America. I once emailed them the names of every single person on our team and provided a sentence or two about what I thought they'd be like in bed, offering often surprising but I believe accurate analysis. When they start ripping on morbidly obese people who are already a Twinkie away from not being able to exit their homes, I bow out.

I don't know what makes me a little different, unless it's that during my wonder years my upper jaw extended too far out of my face and I couldn't even touch my lips together. I was tortured by people like them every fucking day of my junior high school life. Once you've lived through that kind of stuff during the very time when your self-esteem is forming, you don't feel all that compelled to laugh at fat/bald/ugly people because they're fat, ugly or bald. Of course retards are still fair game.

Anyway, it's more than the way black women celebrate all women and don't turn the workplace into a junior high school locker room nightmare. It's that they accept praise as gracefully as they offer it. They're the ones who coached me to accept their compliments with a thank you as opposed to a "no, whatever" wave of the hand. If you wave off a black woman, she'll stare at you with a look of authority unique to black women and take it as you challenging her aesthetic judgement as a whole. She'll punish you by throwing more praise at you in a scolding manner. But also, they accept compliments with the regal grace of royalty and respond with appreciation that makes you feel good that you shared. I've learned to respond as they do, with a happy smile and a gracious thanks.